In Sanity
by woodbyne
Summary: AU, Snapped Canada, One-shot, Character death, Douche-France, self-harm, questionable insanity. "I wonder if I've always been this mad?"


**I've purposely made things a little confusing, so if you don't get it; sign in, review 'what the actual fuck?' and I will explain it to you ^^  
>Swearing, insanity, self-harm, character death. Enjoy!<strong>

The decent into madness is slow. It's a painful process. It hurts the mad, but also those around them. And that hurts even more.

It started with stupid things. Stupid, stupid things. Like when people automatically assumed I was my brother, I went along with it. That's all fun and games at a party,

But then I started believing it.

I am Alfred F Jones.

No I'm not. My name is Matthew Williams. Maaaaaaaattie. I have a life and a boyfriend and everything all of my own. But it's more understated than Alfred's.

I don't mind. I never did. I only seethed with jealous rage when no one was looking. No one was listening. No one was ever listening.

They tell me now that it's a tumour. I have a genuine medical condition that makes me act like a raving loon.

That only takes me down to involuntary manslaughter though.

Man slaughter.

Man's laughter.

I laughed when I beat his head in. There was wet snapping of skull and splat of blood. And his brain looked like mincemeat on the pavement. It serves him right for leaving.

He left me. Like in that movie. You know, where the guy has a fifty per cent change of life or death and his girlfriend is a cheating whore? Yeah. Well my whore didn't cheat. He just left. Packed his bags and left without a word.

"Matthieu? Matthieu! What happened in the bathroom?" he yelled at me, angry and afraid. So maybe there was blood on the ceiling and it was dripping all over the floor. It wasn't all mine. There was pig blood in there too. I told the butcher I was making black pudding for a family event. He was perfectly happy to give me litres and litres of the pretty, pretty red.

"Don't you like it Francis? You said that it needed painting," I smiled. I did it for him. He seemed angry. I sat on the edge of our bed. There was pig blood and me blood all over the carpet. And me. I was fixing up my wrist where the glass had cut it. I had dropped the empty piggy blood bottle in the sink and it shattered. Sliced all up my arm. I'd sown half of it up myself before I realised that I'd forgotten the thread. And the disinfectant. And the needle, so I'd really just been poking a pin in and out of my arm for twenty minutes, but everyone makes mistakes.

Then I went to find bandages, but there weren't any. So I used duct tape. Shiny and silver fix me up and make me better duct tape. Held together with prayers and duct tape. You can fix anything with duct tape.

"Matthieu! What have you done to yourself?" he asked, there was a hiccup in his voice. A choked sob.

What had I done? I looked down at my arm. The bloody mangled flesh. What had I done? My eyes widened. The pain flared. I screamed_._

But that wasn't so bad. He was with me. He stayed because I needed him. I needed him to tell me when I was being crazy.

"Matthieu! You can't eat that! It's poison!" He shouted, pointing at the box in my hand. So maybe it had RAT B GONE on it in big red letters and I was trying to tip it into our casserole. Big whoop. I shrugged, waving it around and pouting.

"Calm down, Francis, you don't have to shout." I smiled. I felt just fine. Rat poison. It was only poisonous to rats. Well, I know that it's poisonous to everybody, but it can't touch me. I'm crazy.

I wonder if I've always been this mad.

"Francis? Saint Francis of Assai? Where are you my honey bunch?" I kept singing that over and over as I walked through the house but he didn't answer. All his things were gone. Long gone. CDs, DVDs, QEDs, PhDs (Not that he had any) were all gone. Photos too. There were no photos of him. It was like a bad teen romance novel and he never existed. He was cut out of all the pictures by angry scissors. Scissors made for a right-handed person and being used by a leftie. Left wing extremists.

The lights are on but nobody's home. I wasn't home either. I was far away in my own little world of make believe.

He visited. He pitched up on my doorstep and tried to hug me. After three days, the stupid fucker.

I said that.

"You've got some nerve, Francis. Fuck off,"

"Mattie? Mattie, it's me!" he frowned at me, all confused. The brass balls that man had.

"Don't think you can sweet-talk your way inside. You left me! When I needed you most!" For a crazy person I made a lot of sense.

But I don't think I was really crazy. I don't think I am. People tell me that I am and I go along with it. Such a people-pleaser. I go out of my way, bent over backwards and I don't even get so much as a 'goodbye; adieu; au revoir; so long, doll face.'

"Matthew, it's me; Alfred. Please, Mattie, what happened," he's wheedling and coaxing now. Trying to confuse me. Like that time he did. And that other time. What times am I talking about? I don't know. I'll remember later.

"Francis Bonnefoy, don't you dare try and confuse me!" I said, hands on my hips. I kicked him in the shins.

"Ow! Fuck! Jesus! Matt! What was that for?" he had the bloody cheek to demand of me. Well, his cheek wasn't bloody. Not yet, at any rate.

He bent over to clutch at his shin and I kneed him in the face, elbowed him in the back, just like they do in those wrestling shows on TV, the ones Alfred always watches. He's such a good brother to me.

"Mattie?" He sounds scared now, and I smile. That's good. I've got the drop on him and now he can be afraid of me. I'll show him what fidelity means.

"Shut up, Francis, I don't want to hear any of your silver-plated bullshit. What if I'd hurt myself, huh? It would be on your head." I kicked him in the ribs when he tried to get back and I heard something crunch. He let out a keening noise like an animal and stayed very still.

"Mattie, please, please, please don't!" it felt good to hear him beg.

"No can do~!" I sang as I smashed the heel of my shoe into his nose, listening to the snap of bone below the scream. I got down and straddled his chest. We were still on my doorstep – yes Francis, _my_ doorstep, not yours or ours, _mine_ – and the neighbours were beginning to come out and watch. I waved at them, you know, like a good neighbour should? I was a good neighbour.

I picked up the pot of geraniums from next to my front door (the pot I hide the spare key under) and I smashed it into his face. Francis had stopped moving after I kicked him in the face, but I kept pounding at his face with the flowerpot like I was trying to ground corn into maize meal on his face until the terracotta broke in my hands and left them all full of soil and blood and cuts.

It was at about that point that I realised that I was giggling uncontrollably – a terrible sound for a man to make – and then I was whisked away by strong men (between you, me and this straightjacket, the guy on the left was yummy. I could just eat him)and plonked here.

They took me to court and back – it was ever so nice of them to do that for me, after all, I don't want to be any trouble. Though what does set me off into a blistering rage is that the lawyers and the judge and even that odd Frenchman who took to the witness stand (It was the most uncanny thing, he looked _just_ like Francis) seem to to be suffering under the delusion that I killed Alfred Jones.

That's preposterous.

I'm Alfred Jones.

I wonder when my brother Matthew will come and visit me?


End file.
